Lamy EF troubleshooting

I got a Lamy Safari pen with an extra fine (EF) nib for Christmas. It was a replacement for another I had carelessly lost at an airport a few months ago. They were exactly the same, except that the first one was white and had a steel EF nib, and the gift was the model pictured above with a black chrome plated EF nib. The white one wrote smooth from the start, and I had been struggling with the new one for weeks (on the same paper, with the same ink) and it was still scratchy. Not consistently scratchy, but the intermittent inklessness that gives hope and cruelly snatches it away — right along with one’s sanity.

I found these suggestions online, but none of them worked:

1. Flush the pen with dish soap. Submerge the entire nib into soapy water and fill the converter. Repeat several times.

2. Same as above with ammonia.

3. Scribble for a while on cardboard.

4. Carve at the channel on the nib where the ink flows.*

The magical solution!

What finally worked for my pen was running a piece of paper just under the nib, between the nib and the rest of the pen. There must have been something stuck under there that interfered with the flow of the ink because it now works perfectly. If none of the above work and you can’t exchange it where you bought it, each Lamy pen does come with a lifetime warranty. They charge $9.50 “only to cover postage and handling back to you,” but that’s a little better paying to replace a new $20+ dollar pen, I suppose. Good luck!

* Okay, I was too nervous about wrecking my new pen to actually try this one.